The invention relates to the field of communications, and in particular to the monolithic integration of planar lightwave circuits or integrated optics RF circuits.
There are currently several modes of communication that are in use. Wireless and optical communications are two of the newer forms of communication and have been pursued in separate fields. There have been several attempts to combine these two forms of communications at the chip level. One of these attempts is the use of fiber to the home (FTTH) optical communications, which provides enormous bandwidth, but has a large overhead. However, it is a fixed line and does not meet the necessary requirements for wireless applications. Another is the radio frequency (RF) approach, which can provide the convenience of wireless but it is bandwidth limited.
There is a need in the art to combine these two modes of communications so that RF monolithic microwave circuits (MMICs) and discrete optics components can be integrated to form a bridge between RF and fiber optic communication technologies.